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Tag Archives: Mentor Texts

I love using mentor texts to inspire and support writers in writing workshop. Over several years I developed a collection of mentor texts (such as Those Shoes, The Waterfall, and Beekeepers for narrative writing) and folders of past student writing (such as A Disturbance in the Force and I Love Knitting! for opinion). I had always thought of mentor texts as books, articles, or student writing, but a closing workshop at TCRWP’s Writing Institute led by Maggie Beattie Roberts (@maggiebroberts) really expanded my understanding of mentor texts.

The workshop shared how and why we could incorporate videos in writing workshop. Roberts explained that we need to lean on kids’ digital literacy strengths as we teach writing. She presented data from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Generation M2 Study, which showed that kids have an extensive amount of media exposure and digital expertise. Rather than pushing back against this, she suggested that teachers tap into students’ engagement with media by using digital texts as mentor texts. I absolutely loved her ideas and wanted to share what I learned with you.

What is a digital mentor text?

A digital mentor text is a digital text that the class revisits throughout the year. It acts just like a traditional mentor text, but consists of clips of media or digital material. Here are some examples shared during the workshop:

When searching for opinion videos, it is helpful to look for ads. Persuasive mentor texts usually make a specific claim, offer convincing support, and use precise and sophisticated vocabulary to support the claim. Some questions to use with students as you view an opinion mentor text:

What might a thesis statement be for this video?

How is it persuasive? What strategies does the video use to support claim? How does it use repetition? How does it use images? How does the order of the video matter?

Informational videos often have certain expert tone to them, but the best videos also have engaging facts, comparisons, and mini stories to make them even more interesting. Some questions to use with students as you view an informational mentor text:

What idea does the video put forth about ____?

What are the moves the writers use to make ________ fascinating/terrifying/lovable?

What is the structure of the information? What order were the facts presented and why?

What images does the video use to support ideas?

Finding Digital Mentor Texts

Now that I have a little time on my hands, I’m starting to search YouTube to see which videos I might want to use as digital mentor texts in my 4th grade classroom this year. The first one I really love is Bullfrogs Eat Everything. It is such a great video–it is written in paragraph form, has great sentence structures (main idea and detail, compare and contrast), includes fascinating facts, uses elaboration, and the list goes on!

Do you use digital mentor texts? If so, I’d love to hear about your favorites! If you don’t and want to search for them with me, let me know and we can share our links!